When There’s a Bully in the Pulpit

The following is an uncorrected transcript generated by a transcription service. Before quoting in print, please check the corresponding audio for accuracy.

Mike Kruger: Well, good afternoon, everybody Great to be with you. Go ahead and get our session kicked off. If you are new to this session or not sure exactly where you are. My name is Mike Krieger. I’m the president of Reformed Theological Seminary in Charlotte, North Carolina, also professor of New Testament, and you’re in this session on bully pulpit, which is just a fresh look at how to think about leaders today, and how we’re looking for leaders that are gentle, compassionate, merciful shepherds, like Christ. So we’re so glad you’re here. I trust you know that the session is based on my recent book that came out was on him and last year, called bully pulpit. No surprise, I know that they had a book table out here, I didn’t know they were going to do this, where they’re selling the book, actually at a cheaper price than down in the bookstores. So in fact, I just bought five copies for myself. So hey, no, I didn’t. But but if you’re interested in getting a copy, you don’t have a copy there are selling them, although actually the stack was going quickly. So that’s, I suppose a good sign. But hopefully, there’ll be a few when we’re done, if you’ve not yet picked up a copy of the book. So just thankful for your time, the day, I know that as the week is winding down, this is the very last breakout slot at 130. Before we have two more plenaries. And I know that you are probably at the end of your listening capacity. And I’m at the end of my speaking capacity. So we’re going to make a great team today. The thing is, is that we are entering into this last session with a rather heavy topic. And I know that it’s a lot to ask for you to stay sort of awake intellectually during such a heavy topic. And I have to admit, as we get started that I never really envisioned myself speaking, or even writing on such a heavy topic. Someone had said, What would you like to talk about, I would love to come in here and talk about leadership positively. I love to talk about good leaders, what leaders could be what they ought to be. No one wants to talk about what they shouldn’t be. It’s hard to talk about bad Christian leaders when I would much rather talk about good Christian leaders. So it’s one of those sober realities where sometimes you find yourself in a situation where you feel obligated as a Christian leader to speak into a situation even if it turns out mainly to be bad news, so to speak. In many ways, I think of the character of Gandalf and Lord of the Rings always criticized for being a bearer of bad tidings Stormcrow, they called him always coming and bringing the bad news that’s out there. And I suppose everyone has to play that role from time to time. So let me begin, it’s a little bit of a backstory and how I got interested in this topic. I’ve been now at reformed Theological Seminary for 20. Well, coming up on 23 years, as a professor of New Testament, about 11 of those, I’ve been the president of the campus. And as you know, in a seminary context, we think a lot about leadership. And we try to do our best I think about it as positively as we can, what leaders ought to be can be good leaders, and we try to shape them and think about them for the next generation. But over the last five years, maybe even over the last 10 years, though, I’ve become increasingly restless about some of the leaders that we’re all seeing in the church today. Not necessarily leaders that are being produced by my seminary or anybody Seminary in particular, but just generally speaking, case, after case, Scene after scene out there in the national level has shown that there is a style of leadership that has taken hold in certain quarters of the church. And it’s not the style of leadership that I think reflects the image of Christ, nor reflects the biblical model we have for what leadership ought to be. But it’s not just high profile cases, that we all could list the famous examples we all know of pastors that are spiritually abusive, and maybe we’ll even talk about some of those cases today. But even in my own circles, I’ve seen and heard of, and are aware of cases where this seems to be a replicating problem. And it makes you wonder whether there’s something that needs to be addressed in the church as a result of that problem. In many ways, I think we’ve adopted a leadership model that’s not that different than what Israel itself did long ago. You know, the story when Israel wanted a king and they wanted a king like all the nations and if you read the text, and they’re in First Samuel eight more carefully, you realize that to have a king like all the nations is basically you have a king that can go beat up your enemies, right? Who can fight for you? In fact, when Israel asked for King you know, that God warned Israel and be careful what kind of leader you’re wanting here? Because yeah, he may be able to beat up your enemies, but he’s also going to turn on you. And he’s going to oppress you and he’s going to take your songs he’s going to take your daughters he’s going to take your your land and He’s going to rule you harshly. And Israel’s like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I heard it. Okay. Give us the king. And so God said, Okay, here’s your king. And we know how the story goes. I think leadership is one of those lessons that I think people maybe just can’t learn until they learn it the hard way. And God in one sense, gave them a king like they wanted. And he did exactly what he said that he would do. He led the people in harsh, heavy handed authoritarian ways. In fact, in my book, I catalogued not just that instance, but many others of how the kingship ended up splitting over harsh, authoritarian leadership. So I’ve been watching this for years. And a number of years ago, I started writing a book on the subject. And then I started a blog series. In fact, this was before the very famous podcast by Mike Cosper, The Rise and Fall of Mars Hill, which was a very illuminating podcast, I might add, some of you most of you probably have heard it. When I heard it come out, I was like, Oh, my, I had already started my work on the issue. But I’m like this podcast is going to send this into the stratosphere, this topic, and it really has, and everybody seems to be talking about it. But before my book was released, I did a blog series on my website about the topic of spiritual abuse and harsh leadership. And here’s the thing, I’m not under the impression that my blog is called cannon fodder, because most of my work up till now is on issues related to tax and canon and so forth. And some of you are probably wondering, What in the world are you doing talking about this issue anyway, right. But most of my stuff on my site Cannon Fodder has to do with text and Canon issues. But I began to do a series on hopefully what I saw as a helpful balance to some of the leadership problems. And I’ve never seen a blog series light up like that ever. It was absolutely a de luge of traffic over just that topic. And then it wasn’t even just the articles, it was the emails that I got. People who saw the blog series wrote me an email after email, after email, people just telling me their story, and long pages. Here’s what happened to me what you’re describing as my church. In fact, time and time again, I got people writing to me saying, are you talking about my church? Are you I know you must be talking about my pastor, because everything you said in that series, and then after the book came out, everything said the book sounds exactly like what I’ve been through. And of course, I make that point in the book, which is that there is a pattern. There is a playbook, if you will, that seems to be almost run mechanically by people who misuse their power like this in such a way that when you know, one story, in a sense, you’ve known them all. After the book came out, I’ve was I’ve been getting emails every week, from folks whose who’ve said very similar things that they feel like, I’ve told their story. And they’re grateful that they feel like someone understands what they’ve been through. Even yesterday, I was walking through the book stalls on my way to a meeting I had, and I was stopped by several people who had read my book bully pulpit, and one gentleman had stopped me in tears. And said, I want you to know that your book basically saved my life. You didn’t mean that a literal sense. But it was the type of clarity and definition and guidance he needed during a very serious spiritual abuse crisis he was in and wanted to say thank you for the book. And so one thing that’s been encouraging to me is recognizing that after talking about the subject, things just seem to be coming out of the woodwork about it’s like people have been looking for a way to discuss this. And it looks like now they feel like there’s finally some categories, and some definitions. And of course, that leads us to today, thankful, again, be back at GGC. On this topic, I led a panel discussion with John Yates and Dan torriani. A couple cycles ago, I lose track of all these TGC sorry, it’s one or two ago. And I’m thankful to have a chance to talk with you about it again today. So here’s my very modest goal in our little session today, especially given how tired I know you must be. And certainly, the fact that we’re at the end of the week, I want to spend the first part of our time together just talking about what is spiritual abuse? Do we see it in the Bible? Where does it come from? How do we define it, which is obviously very critical to do rightly. And then the second half of my time with you, I want to talk about misconceptions, and misunderstandings of spiritual abuse and how to make sure that we have the right balance. Because as I know, you know, there is extremes, right, there are some that think abuse is overblown, not a problem, nothing to see here. And then there’s another extreme that sort of wants to find an under every rock and around every tree. And I want to try to navigate that and thread between those two extremes. So that’s our plan for our short time. And as we do that, I think it’s probably good that I pray just as we deal with a very weighty issue. So let’s do that. Lord, we’re aware of the heaviness of this topic.

particularly aware that there’s probably people in this room that have suffered and maybe even greatly suffered under really bad leaders. And that’s hard, especially when they claim the name of Christ. Lord, help us to always look to even in the midst of all this to the greatest leader, the perfect leader, the flawless leader, the leader that we all want to keep our eyes on Christ Himself. And Lord, we know that even with flawed leaders, he still reigns. And Lord, we pray that You would just make more and more of your leaders like him. We pray this in his name, amen. So, every Christmas, I noticed that some of these TV channels run sort of movie marathons, for Christmas movie marathons. And for the last few Christmases, I noticed that there was a movie marathon where for 24 hours a day, for seven days leading up to Christmas, they played the Christmas movie called A Christmas Story. Over and over again. I actually grew up having seen this movie when it was in the theaters. You probably know the movies by a little boy named Ralphie. He wants a red Ryder BB gun for Christmas. It’s set in the 1940s with all that fun 1940s Nostalgia old cars, kids that walk to school, they don’t have video games, they play outside, there’s no TV, they listen to the radio, it was a fun flashback to what seems to be a more pure and wonderful time. And it’s a funny movie in all kinds of ways. And I’m sure many of you know about it and have probably seen it. But one of the most standout scenes in the movie and one of the funniest I might add is when they’re on the way to school and the sort of town bully finds them on the path. And he’s hiding behind the fence and as soon as they walk by, they hear that cackling laugh. And out he jumps. And he’s got his coonskin cap, his little buddy named Grover dill. I don’t know where you came up with that name, who’s his partner in crime. And then you realize there’s a musket Farkas right? I love that Dame whoever got the name Scott Farkas, that that name needs to be sealed in the annals of great movie names. And then he proceeds to beat up Ralphie and his brother, and all their friends, twisting their arm torturing them and so on. And as you watch it, you laugh and it’s funny. And the truth of the matter is, we can all relate because the idea of a bully is sort of the universal human experience, right? Imagine if we all had time to tell our story, you probably grew up with a bully in school. Movies have bullies in them. Fact it wouldn’t take much work to lift lists all the famous movie bullies out there. Biff Tannen from Back to the Future, right? Ace Meryl and stand by me. And of course, Draco Malfoy and Harry Potter, and on and on it goes, everybody’s got a bully in their life. Of course, the sad part. And this, of course, is part of the reason I wrote my book is because sometimes bullies find their way in the places they shouldn’t be. And we would hope the one place that you wouldn’t find that kind of leadership is in the church. But sometimes, it makes its way into the church. But here’s the trick. And this is a thing that I think we need to recognize and that I’ve tried to make clear, as I’ve written on this issue, the bullies that find their way in the church are not that easy to spot. In the movies, they’re obvious, right? I mean, it takes you all 30 seconds and you watch them you know, that guy’s the bully, right? The way he looks the way he dresses, but bullies in the real world aren’t twisting their mustaches and plotting the Ferris Lee how to take down the good guy. Because in the real world, you often mistake the bullies for the good guy. In fact, oftentimes you think they’re the good guy until you find out later that the bad guy. Of course, Jesus talked about this when he talks about wolves looking like sheep. They look like the good guys. Till you find out later. They’re the bad guys. mean, how shocking would it be if you watched back to the future? And it turns out that the bad guy at the end wasn’t really so much Biff Tannen at all? But was it really dark brown? What kind of ending would that be? What have you watched Harry Potter and it wasn’t so much Draco Malfoy that turned out to be the bad guy, but was actually Dumbledore that was abusive. That’s actually how the real world works. Okay? The real world doesn’t work like movies, where you can always know who the good guys and bad guys are. Because in the real world, in the church, sometimes you thought was the good guy turns out to be the bad guy. And this is exactly of course, the problem we’re facing with spiritual abuse. So what exactly is spiritual abuse? Well, I started with the story there of scut farkus, because I think it’s a form of spiritual bullying. Okay. Now, in my book, I come into a much more detailed definition, and certainly won’t have a full way to go into all the layers of that definition and all the qualifications I give to that definition that I do in print. But here’s a short definition. spiritual abuse, of course, is a form of spiritual bullying, but it’s really when a leader, a Christian leader, who has real authority wields that authority in a way that’s harsh, domineering, authoritarian and heavy handed Now as soon as you start talking about wielding your authority in a way that’s harsh, domineering, authoritarian and heavy handed, you probably can think of biblical examples of where that exact thing happened. And I’ll come to those biblical examples in a moment. But I want you to notice that the definition is very intentional, okay? It’s a person in spiritual authority. This is a key part of the understanding of spiritual abuse, spiritual abuse is something that happens top down, okay? It’s someone who has some level of legitimate authority, I’ll come back to that in a moment over someone else, usually, in our case is even God given authority over someone else. And yet, when they wield that authority, they do it in a way that harms and really domineering those under their care. It’s also called spiritual abuse. Because there’s a spiritual component, the authority is technically related to something that God at least in some level has sort of commission. So a pastor, of course, would be someone who could be spiritually abusive. Now, by the way, there’s other kinds of abuse in the world. I don’t have time to go into it all. Now. I mean, your boss at work could be abusive, right? He could be a way that’s domineering, authoritarian, manipulative, and so on. But it’s not spiritually abusive, because your boss isn’t doing that in the name of God. Right? He’s not saying you should follow me because God has given me an authoritative role. So as long as you’re not doing in the name of God, it’s a different kind of abuse. Here, we’re talking about spiritual abuse someone in authority over another in some sort of Christian ministry, whether it be a church or something else. Now, as soon as we talk about the free spiritual abuse, I know that many wonder, well, that’s our phrase, right? So it’s, we don’t find the phrase spiritual abuse in the Bible. And we do not. And of course, there’s lots of terms we use that we feel are valid that don’t come from the Bible, but it is true. It’s not in the Bible. And some think well, okay, so therefore, it’s a, it’s a, maybe it’s just a therapeutic category that we’ve made up in the modern day. And it’s just something we’re imposing on Scripture. And it’s just me sort of a modern psychological thing. Well, I don’t think that quite holds up to the evidence, because I think the concept and this is the key phrase, it’s not just the term, the concept of spiritual abuse is both in church history. And in biblical history. Let me say a word about each of those as we think more about its definition, first church history. Of course, you know, that church history goes all the way back at one level to the very beginning in the book of Genesis, right God’s community of people. And I think you could see even in the book of Genesis, a misuse of authority, even Adam, in one sense, domineering, his wife, Eve, when she in one sense, he rules over her, as that passage says, in the early chapters of Genesis, and I talk about that more in my book, but also, throughout church history, there’s recognitions of this pattern of behavior. I don’t have time to go into all the examples here, there’s so many, and I cover more in print. But let me just mention a couple examples of where this particular problem is recognized in prior generations long before anyone would think it must be a therapeutic category. First, John Chrysostom, early patristic, writer, very famous orator known as the Golden mouth, he was very orthodox, very eloquent. And when he wrote in one of his treatises on the priesthood, interestingly, Chrysostom spent a lot of time lamenting the state of pastors in his day. He was very upset about the direction their leadership was taking. just pausing right there that reminds you that if you have a concern about the state of leadership, well, welcome to The Club, right? It’s been that way for generations, and it will always be that way at some level or another. Of course, that doesn’t give us any excuse to ignore it. Right? We can’t say, well, because there’s always bad leaders. Let’s just turn a blind eye to it. No, but it does give us perspective. Chris system in a very famous line actually complains about the state of leadership in his day and I want you to listen to his words. Because when you listen to his words, you’re thinking, Wait, was that written in the fourth century? Or was that written in the last month? Right? Here’s what he says about the pastors in his day. They are described as those with love of praise, greed for performance, teaching meant to please in noble flattery, contempt for the poor, fawning on the rich, absurd honors and harmful favors, which indeed endanger giver and receiver alike, servile fear, which I think plays into the spiritual abuse side fit only for the meanest of slaves. restraint of plain speaking in the last line is particularly devastating, much pretended and no real humility. Why, wow. So

we’ve got people who want to have a lot of praise. They want to have the big stage. They seem to be out for special Press. potential treatment. They ignore those of lower status. They install and inflict fear in others. They don’t really speak plainly because they want to have people love what they say. And they have no humility but implicitly pride. And you’re thinking yourself, wow, must not have been a good time for leaders and Christmas some day. But at the same time, you could read that and go, Wow, could that have not described many cases we’ve heard in the last number of years. So when Christmas and rice that is he used the term spiritual abuse now is a term that he doesn’t use any of those turns, but you can see this sort of big show Celebrity pastor rule heavily over those under you is clearly happening. Fast forward 1000 years to the 1800s. Some of you know the famous book by James Bannerman, the church of Christ and maybe one of the most classic traditional looks at ecclesiology published by Banner of Truth. This is sort of the classic go to in the Presbyterian reformed world, if you’re in my world, published in 1859. He describes exactly what we’re talking about here, but he has his own terms. Here’s what he calls the sort of domineering pastor and leader, he calls it spiritual tyranny. Interesting term, and then in another place, he calls it spiritual oppression. And then he goes on to explain, when you have a leader like that, he says, you should limit their power. Why? Because this is what he says, quote, it excludes the possibility of that power, becoming an independent despotism, or lordship in the hands of those rulers, and of their regarding it as if it were given for their own aggrandizement and exaltation. Or to be used for the subjugation by a spiritual tyranny of the consciences and understandings of the other members of the church. Now we go on and on here in this church history side, I cover more of it in the book, but in one sense, the terminology is secondary. I mean, you can pick whatever term you like spiritual abuse, spiritual oppression, spiritual tyranny, you could just use the term domineering, heavy handed. And that’s exactly what we find the Bible using to describe this. So leaving church history, and turning to just a quick look at a couple biblical texts, we realize that the concept of spiritual abuse is all over the Bible. I have a very lengthy treatment of this in my book here, just a couple quick passages. I don’t know if you really noticed in the gospels as much that when Jesus sort of starts putting together his band of disciples, they already show up to the scene with their own sense of what leadership means. And it’s not very healthy. In fact, I just taught just literally just last week in my Bible study at reformed Theological Seminary, I do on Wednesday mornings on a passage in Mark chapter nine, or I think it’s more chapter nine, where Jesus basically confronted disciples for walking along the road and arguing which one of them is the greatest. Let’s think about that for a moment. They’re walking along the road, Jesus is up ahead, the disciples are walking. They’re arguing, who is the greatest, who’s most valuable, who’s the big show in their little kingdom of God, who should be on the seats have the most power in authority, and they get to their destination? And Jesus very coyly says, Hey, what are you talking about on the road? Jesus ever asked you a question like that, you know, you’re in for it. Right? So and they text tells us they were silent. They were silent because they already knew going in that that is not the model of leadership that Christ affirms, which is you’re looking for the highest seat, you’re looking for the most power. Other examples show this same proclivity. Luke chapter nine, Jesus is in a village of the Samaritans and is rather dismissed and disrespected by the Samaritans. Here is the Son of God, here is the Messiah. He’s in the Samaritan Village and effectively don’t give him the time of day as they’re leaving. Here’s what James are. Here’s what I think it was James and John to the disciples come and ask Lord, you want us to call down fire from heaven and consume them? Interesting question. So if someone doesn’t, you know, do what you want them to do you step out of line, we’re dropping the hammer here on them from heaven and Jesus in this very scene ends up rebuking him saying, it says in the text firmly rebukes them in a way that is not the way we do it. Later, we learn more about this when they’re James and John, after this scene of calling down fire from heaven. Jesus tells them later. Look, let me explain how rulership works with the Gentiles and by that he means unbelievers, the Gentiles lord it over those they serve and exercise authority over them. Carry you Oh is the word they’re in degree, okay? Gotta carry yo is this word of basically domineer. Keep that word of mind because it comes up later in a really important passage. And then Jesus says, that’s how they do it. Then he turns to the disciples and says very plainly, and it shall not be so among you. Interesting, you have a disciples that maybe have a proclivity to big displays of power, most glorified seats, the places of highest authority, call down fire, act like the Gentile leaders where you domineer and authoritative elite over others, and Jesus says, that is not the way we’re going to do it. And then you know what Jesus says right after that, whoever must be great among you must be your servant. Never be first among you must be slave of all. I wonder, when we think about leadership, whether we have thought sufficiently about that kind of leadership. I think what we do is we give maybe a little bit of lip service to Yeah, servant leadership. Sure, sure, sure. But then when it comes to the model of leadership, we just take it from the world’s model leadership and just put it right into our church communities. Jesus’s mind seems to suggest that whatever kind of authority we have, and we do have real authority, I’ll come back to that in a moment. It has to be wielded in such a way that it looks entirely different from the world. And I think we can say that that’s unfortunately not always what we see happen. As we make our way through other passages, and we don’t have time to say much about them, another theme comes up time and time again, and that is the theme of gentleness and leadership. First Timothy, three, three, and Overseer and elder a presbytery. Here’s what it says an overseer must be not violent, but gentle. The term plague tastes in the Greek therefore violent is often translated with that word, and it gives people the impression that you shouldn’t be physically violent. Well, that’s true, but actually in the lexicon show that the word plague takes there has a much wider semantic range. In fact, the low NIDA Greek Lexicon defines the word this is interesting defines the word plague tastes as bully. Someone who’s pugnacious, demanding bully. In fact, the Christian Standard Bible, the CSB now, which is more of a newer translation has actually changed the wording here. It says an overseer must not be a bully, but gentle. Now, just pause on that from it. That means the requirement for a minister, not a requirement to be a Christian, right? Christians, all of us battle with various sins, and there are Christian bullies. It’s not a requirement to be a believer, if you want to be a minister, you want to be in a place of spiritual authority. The thing that will disqualify you is to be a bully. Peter picks up on the same thing. First, Peter 532. Elders again, shepherd the flock of God, not for shameful gain, but eagerly and then here’s the word not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock that word domineering as the same word Jesus used to kind of carry yo. You wonder if Peter use it here because he actually heard Jesus say it. It’s interesting question, isn’t it? When Jesus didn’t continually harped on the disciples not, don’t lord it over, don’t lord it over, don’t lord it over. And then Peter gives advice to pastors don’t lord it over. It’s interesting the contrast here, Peter says, Don’t look to lord it over instead, lead by example. That’s very telling. When you lead by example, it’s not so much that you’re standing behind the sheep with a whip, or kicking them, but rather, you’re standing in front of the sheep, and they’re following. So it’s the opposite of an abusive leader. It’s a leader that leads by example. And by the way, if you have a leader that leads by example, then the most important person’s holiness a leader needs to look to is not necessarily whether the flocks are holy, but whether they’re holy. Because there have to lead by example. So what you realize then is that the picture of the Shepherd has to be that your personal holiness is intact, and you don’t lead by domineering and bullying, but rather you lead with gentleness.

Now, before we leave this first point, and I felt like I barely scratched the surface here, let me just make one clarification before we move to the second, and I’ll have two points today. And that is simply this notice what the solution to abusive leadership is not abusive leadership is not solved by eliminating all authorities. This is our worldly solution. The worldly solution is oh, there’s abuse over there. Well, we’ll solve that let’s take away all authorities. There’s no one in any position over anyone else and you just flatten it all out. That seems like a good solution from a worldly perspective, perhaps but of course, we would argue a it doesn’t actually solve the problem. one and B. It’s not a biblical concept, the Bible does acknowledge real authorities. However, even in the midst of those real authorities, the Bible acknowledges also that that authority can be abused. The reason the abuse of authority is real is because authority is real. Okay, authority is a real thing, which is why it can be abused. Right? I wonder when you think about that for a moment whether the church spends so much time talking about the realness of authority, Contra to a world that’s anti authoritarian? Have we spent enough time talking about the way it can be misused? I think it’s true that we have to battle the world’s anti authority stature by saying, hey, authorities real That’s That’s correct when he did say that. But let’s not forget the other half. But if authority is real guess what’s also real abuse of authority? Do we give due attention to that? Okay, so there’s my quick overview of definition and background, I’m gonna move on to the second part of our time together. And these are what I call clarifications, in qualifications. Why do I call it that? Because every time I have a chance to talk on abuse, I know there’s all these thoughts in our minds concerns? Or what about this? What about that, what about falling off the ditch on this side versus pouring off the ditch on that side. So I’m going to lay out a few considerations for you here in the second heading. And these are things I hope, bring balance to our discussion of abuse, we want to take it seriously. But we want to make sure we do it with balance. So let’s walk through a few of these. Quickly. Here’s the first of these clarifications in qualifications. First, our concerns about spiritual abuse should be express out of love for Christ Church, love for Christ Church. I can begin by saying, as I imagine, you could say that I love the Bride of Christ. I love the church. Christians are called the love the church. She is the centerpiece of his kingdom movement on Earth, and Christ has promised He will prepare her bra His Bride and purify his bride. He can also acknowledge that there are people out there that seem to be perpetual church critics, all they can do is find negative things to say about the church. That doesn’t seem to be ever good enough. And everything seems to be pointing out the flaws time and time again. And of course, that’s already happening in the secular world, right, which is they always pile on whatever problems there are. That seems that no one’s very happy with the church today. So on one level, we want to acknowledge that whatever we want to do, we do out of love for the church. And we want to avoid a sort of unbridled cynicism, skepticism and criticism of the church as if that’s the only thing we can ever do. However, does that love for the church preclude a concern about abuse? I sure hope not. Because I think the concern about abuse is exactly what someone should do if they love the church. Because if we love the church, do we not want her purifies, right? If we love the church, do we not want her change to be more like Christ? Do you realize those of you who love the Protestant Reformation like I do, how much Martin Luther critiqued the church? Maybe what people don’t realize this. I mean, it’s like, it’s like, well, the church critique could happen back then. But and you can’t ever do it. Now. I mean, in one sense, Luther love the church was a church man. And yet, at the same time, said, there are real problems here. We need reform here. In fact, it was actually not just the theological problems in Rome that bothered Luther, it was also the moral problems. If you remember his journey to Rome and early career, he was still a monk and still sort of, you know, glassy, eyed about everything. He showed up in Rome thinking, Oh, this is the mecca of all that’s great. And he got there and said, Oh, my gosh, this city is just corrupt and twisted. And not just the people but the clergy. Part of what motivated Luther was to change the church and make her more pure. Why? Because he hated the church, because he loved the church. So here’s why we have to find this balance. And it’s not always easy to do. It is a danger that we think well because the world critiques the church, we can convince ourselves that the way I’m going to love her best is never bring up any problems. Never address any weaknesses. I suppose one could construe that as loving in a fashion. But what if you had a friend that was really losing their way and you never confronted them? Is that loving? And what if you went to a friend and say, Hey, I see a sin pattern in your life, I really want to help you sort of fight that sin. And what if your friend said to you Well, if you really loved me, you never point out any problem in my life. But you’d think that would be silly and profoundly unbiblical. Here’s an idea what of loving the church means that we actually care more about her failings as a result, and want to gently, graciously and appropriately help her be sanctified. What of loving the church means that we address whatever mores her reputation in front of a watching world. What of loving the church means calling out the wolves that find their way inside, which is exactly what Jesus asked us. to do to watch for the woods. I want to suggest to you that if the church is the beloved bride of Christ, which of course it is, it’s not a reason to care less about these things. It’s a reason to care more. Okay, that’s the first clarification or qualification. Here’s the second one. This is important to say as well, the vast, vast majority of pastors are good, kind, godly shepherds of the sheep. This is an important thing to say. In the midst of talking about spiritual abuse, which mainly happens in pastoral settings. I just want to say, and I think it needs to be said that this is not true of the vast majority of pastors. I feel like I’ve got a little bit of a pulse on this just by the fact that I’m around pastors every single day in my life. We train pastors in a seminary context, I’m a pastor, I interact almost with all pastors all the time. And I think, pastors for the most part, we’re just so blessed to have them. And it’s also true on top of that, that sometimes churches mistreat their pastors, sometimes pastors are the ones who take it on the chin, and are unjustly attacked. I had a great conversation with my friend, Dan torriani, recently, and he’s like, look, yeah, bathrooms can bully churches, but churches can bully pastors, and he’s exactly right. But here’s the thing, even if it does go both ways, and even if most of the pastors are godly, wonderful, kind people, and I think they are, does that mean, we still don’t address the problem of abuse when it does come up? Sometimes I get the sense that because abusive activity is rare, of course, we don’t really know how rare it is. Right? I think one of the things that’s concerning us is that the at least appearance of it being on the rise. But even if it is rare, there’s a sense of what well, you don’t have to worry about rare things. Just just ignore the if it’s rare, just ignore it. But of course, if there’s sexual abuse to a child at a church, you don’t say, well, because it’s rare, let’s not care about it. We would say the same for spiritual abuse. No, I think there’s an analogy here to the way we think about police officers. And this is, I think, a helpful analogy. I think we all know that there’s been a number of cases in the last five years or so maybe 10 years of police officers using excessive force. Or sometimes people even die as a result of that excessive force. And some people are saying, hey, maybe there’s places where we can try to make sure that that excessive force doesn’t happen. And maybe there’s structural changes we can have and better training, or whatever. But then there’s another side it says, well, but most cops are good cops, and most cops aren’t abusive, and why do you hate cops? And you’re like, Well, I don’t hate cops. I just think that if there are abusive cops, we ought to address that. And so you see the same tension is there, don’t you? Some feel like you want to defend all police by almost saying that there’s there’s no real abuse, and others say, Yeah, most police are still good, but yet we still need to address the abuse, we do see. And this is exactly what I think we need to do when it comes to the church. I think we can say just like with police officers, the vast vast majority of cops are not misusing their power. In fact, the vast majority of police officers are actually probably receiving a lot of criticism and unfair treatment themselves. But if it was your daughter that was misused by police, misused by a police officer, if your child that was shot by a police officer, wrongly, then you might think but that still needs attention, right? That still needs to be addressed. So what we’re saying here is that while we affirm the vast majority of pastors are good and kind, and faithful, and we’re so thankful for it, that does not preclude our concern here over abuse. Okay. Third qualification. This is an important one as well. Just because people are offended or have their feelings hurt, that is not the same as abuse. Just because people are offended or have their feelings hurt, that is not the same as abuse. I think we can all agree that we live in an age where people seem to be offended by just about everything. And if you spend any time on Twitter, which you probably shouldn’t, and nor should I, you’re gonna see that everybody’s mad at everybody all the time for everything. And any slight is world war three,

any offenses, you go to DEF CON one. And we live in a world where things tend to get out of control really quickly. I think we can also acknowledge that we do live in a world where the subjective feelings of people tend to be sort of determined to be the thing that marks truth. And I’ve even read books that say, even a statement from a pastor that says there’s a place like hell in the universe would be abusive, to say such a thing. And I think we need to right now say none of that’s true. It’s not abusive to speak truth. It’s not abusive, to declare truth and simply because someone has a sense that they’re offended does not make it abuse. Same time, however, we need to be careful here. In my own research on spiritual abuse, and the number of cases I studied, I’ve noticed that whenever abuse concerns are raised, one of the most common rebuttals is that, well, these people are just too sensitive. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard that. Is it ever possible that yes, they are too sensitive? Sure. But is it possible to sweep every concern all the time of every leader under the rug under the heading of well, we just live in a therapeutic therapeutic world where people are overly sensitive. I think that leads us into a very dangerous place. In fact, one of the things you’ll discover if you’re looking for signs of spiritually abusive leaders, usually they have a long track record of a debris field or broken relationships behind their ministry. And the idea that you can chalk all of that up to other people being easily offended. And this guy is just doing his normal job is a lot to swallow. Because what you have to basically believe is that it’s everyone else’s fault, except for the guy who’s the common denominator and every single conflict, namely, that one senior pastor is much more likely to believe that debris filled a book broke relationships, because you’ve got a person consistently involved in every single one of them. So yes, being offended is not evidence of abuse. But neither is the claim everyone’s over a sensitive prove that there’s not abuse. Which is why we need to be very careful to investigate these things carefully, and not just simply jump to conclusions. Here’s the other thing related to this point. And I think it’s important to mention is that sometimes if you bring up an abuse, not only maybe you’re too therapeutically minded, but maybe you’re just socially progressive, too, I’ve heard this, when people bring up spiritual abuse problems, and don’t listen to them, they’re socially progressive if they care about abuse. I don’t understand that. Because I think it’s a biblical concept. I feel like I care about this issue. And I’m, at least in my own mind, about the opposite of progressive when it comes to about everything I can think of. I actually wrote a book about the 10 commandments of progressive Christianity, and argued against it. So the idea that someone is progressive, because they care about abuse, I think is a misunderstanding. So how do you adjudicate those complex situations? Well, I recommend in my book that you need very careful, and often I recommend third party investigations to get to the bottom of a lot of those complexities. Okay, a fourth clarification. This is important one, too, we want to be careful not to create a culture of accusation where people are assumed to be guilty before there’s due process. This is particularly the concern of living in a social media age. Someone doesn’t like their pastor declares the pastor is abusive, goes online, accuses them of being abusive, and off it goes. We want to speak out and say that we don’t think that’s a healthy way to address the abuse problem, right. The best court is not the court of social media, that these cases need to be handled carefully and partially. And of course, everyone’s always innocent, until they’re proven guilty. And so we don’t want rushes of accusations. We don’t want a culture of accusation. That said, though, I think there are misconceptions about this that need to be addressed to one misconception I’ve heard is that spiritual abuse victims don’t care about due process. I’ve interviewed a lot of spiritual abuse victims. And I can tell you that that is a misunderstanding. Is it true that there’s some that run off and make accusations with no due process? Of course, that’s true, what happens, but the vast majority actually have gone through the due process. And the due process has profoundly let them down at every turn. I don’t need to talk about the Ravi Zacharias case for you to know that or the Bill Hybels case for you to know that or the James McDonald case for you to know that. I think you know, that Bill Hybels was investigated, and the women that were accusing him of sexual abuse went through due process, and they went through due process for years and years, and were ridiculed and mocked and accused of being liars, and the reputations were destroyed. And in the first level of investigations, they acquitted, Bill Hybels have any wrongdoing. And it was only after a third party investigation later that they were vindicated and proven right. They went through the due process and the due process effectively destroyed them. Some people went through due process with Ravi Zacharias, his ministry, and because the internal investigation said nothing to see here, they went public. When those are complicated things, I don’t pretend to stand before he was some solution. And when do you go public when you don’t? I have no idea. What I want to say is simply that a lot of those who’ve brought up spiritual abuse and other kinds of uses have actually submitted themselves through the process. And there has turned out the process is profoundly broken at many points. When the process is profoundly broken. What do you do? I don’t know what to do. I don’t have an answer for you today. But I do know this I doubt Ravi Zacharias will would have been exposed for the abuse he did if those people did not come forward publicly. If the internal process was the only thing that was allowed, that would never have been resolved. So I think there’s complications there. What I want to affirm, though, is that we want to make sure that whatever we do we follow that process as carefully as we can, recognizing the limitations of it. And recognizing sometimes the process itself needs a fresh overhaul. Here’s the last thing I’ll mention. As we draw this to a close by way of clarification, we need to be generally open to the claims of spiritual abuse when someone comes forward. One of the very tragic scenarios when someone feels like abuses happen and they step forward, and they go through due process, and they go to the proper authorities is when they’re not heard. And they’re not listened to. Now, don’t misunderstand. I’m saying I’m not saying that whenever someone comes forward makes an accusation that it’s granted immediately that an accusation must be true, of course not has to be investigated. That’s not what I mean by open when I say be open means though you don’t assume someone who makes accusation must be a liar. You don’t assume someone who comes forward to make an accusation must be deceptive and must hate the church and hate their pastor. You don’t assume that there have nefarious things that they’re plotting against the leadership, but that you generally are open to the possibility that they may in fact, be speaking truth, which means they’re offered care and sympathy, compassion, and protected from retaliation until any investigation can be completed. One of the things that’s interesting about this perception that most claims of abuse or lies is that it just doesn’t bear itself out. Statistically. There’s been, there’s been a bunch of studies on the number and in the cases of sexual abuse, at least, the number of of sexual abuse accusations turn out to be live. The statistics are quite low, somewhere between two and 7% of sexual abuse accusations turn out to be frauds, which means somewhere between 98 and 93%, turned out to be right. And what’s interesting is it that’s just measuring the people who actually come forward, many people are sexually abused and never come forward. That’s just the percentage of people who come forward. If you count on the people who’ve actually been sexually abused and that statistic to then you’re looking at a very small number of people who come forward, and just bald faced lie about what happened to them. Again, that does not mean that we assume they’re right. But it does also not mean that we assume they’re lying. And this is where churches need to be very careful. And when someone steps forward, and brings a concern about someone that is a beloved leader, Ravi Zacharias, like you think yourself, how could that possibly be the case that that person must be lying, because I know Ravi Zacharias, and you can never do such a thing. But we do know that people can do such things. And this is where we need to recover an appreciation of the possibility of sin and serious sin and a recovery of the doctrine of total depravity. As I land the plane here, we’ve just looked at two things. What is spiritual abuse by way of definition, and what of his historical and biblical context and then I laid out hopefully, five helpful clarifications to lay off the ditch on either side. A couple of final exhortations for us as we go from here, many of you are pastors, many of you are leaders. Here’s a couple of things you can do as you head out from TGC. First, one reaction to all this, I think that is needed is honesty about the problem. It’s not helped by trying to minimize and ignore it and forget it and pretend it isn’t there. We just need to admit this does happen from time to time, and it’s a very serious thing we need to take seriously. Second thing you can do, as you head out to your ministries is Be compassionate on those who have suffered under spiritual abuse.

Chances are people in your church are looking for a home there, and they may have had a prior church where this happened, and they’re looking for a safe place to be, where they can heal, and grow and recover. You could be that church, look for ways to show them mercy, and grace. But finally, and this is the most important thing, educate yourself and your staff, please. Certainly, I hope my book can help. I’m not pretending my books, the only book out there. There’s many other books out there. Have them read a book, my book someone’s book, educate your staff, educate your leadership team so they can look out for this. Because we love the church, and because we want more leaders who are like Christ, Amen. Let me pray for us as we close out. Lord, we’re grateful for a chance to ponder these things. heavy topic. Give us your biblical wisdom as we balance it in no we just pray bring us more leaders like Christ, gentle, kind, servant hearted, we pray all this in Christ’s name. Amen. Thank you so much.